University House

In response to a Nov. 11 editorial concerning UC Irvine's plans for a University House ("UCI Mustn't Forget the Animals' Homes"), I would like to emphasize the level of detail that went into the planning for this project and outline the approval process involved. Consulting biologists worked in cooperation with university faculty and staff to study and map the site in great detail. This information was used to develop a site plan which avoids a majority of the sensitive habitat and incorporates detailed mitigation measures for restoring and monitoring the few areas that would be affected.

More than $1 million in public and private funds have been spent over the last year or so to renovate university residences of several new California State University presidents, improvements officials say are necessary as the pressure on campus leaders to raise funds becomes more acute. Repairs to many of the homes had been delayed for years and the transition to new campus leaders provided a natural window to conduct the remodels, Cal State officials said. The $1 million is a small sum in a university system with about 420,000 students and more than $2 billion in state funding.

UC Irvine's graduate student leaders have passed a resolution demanding that a planned chancellor's residence be built somewhere other than a four-acre plateau that biology professors regard as the most environmentally sensitive area on campus. The resolution, passed unanimously Thursday night by the Associated Graduate Students of UCI, also asks the university to conduct an environmental impact study of the project.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky shot a torpedo at NBCUniversal's $3-billion "Evolution Plan," saying he opposes the company's proposal to build housing on part of its famous back lot in Universal City. The supervisor asked Universal Studios President Ron Meyer in a letter to abandon plans to develop nearly 3,000 condominiums and apartments at the east end of the studio's property. Yaroslavsky's district includes Universal City. The addition of such housing would have "considerable downside to Universal and to our local economy," Yaroslavsky said in the letter, dated Tuesday.

The Dec. 20 article "UCI Sees Saving Birds as Natural Thing to Do" leads the public to believe that the university magnanimously decided to relocate its University House for the sake of the gnatcatcher. What I would like to point out is that it took extreme pressure from both the students and the faculty to get the university to budge. Until the graduate and undergraduate student governments took an active stand on this and alerted the faculty to the situation, the chancellor was not prepared to budge.

University House has always been envisioned as a stately chancellor's residence on a ridge top with a panoramic view of the sprawling UCI campus and all that surrounds it. From the early 1960s, though, higher priorities were classrooms, laboratories, faculty and student housing and other essentials. As UCI enters its silver anniversary year, a year-old private campaign has raised $800,000 of a projected $3 million needed for the official residence and campus entertainment facility.

In light of new biological evidence and renewed student and faculty opposition, UC Irvine officials are for the first time proposing two alternative sites for a chancellor's home, other than an environmentally sensitive ridge top where a rare bird breeds. The two new sites suggested for University House are also near the southernmost edge of the 1,510-acre campus. Neither hilltop is believed to host rare or threatened species of animals or plants, unlike the original choice, a 2.

A key UC Irvine faculty committee decided Tuesday that future chancellors should not share an ocean-view lot with California gnatcatchers, lest the rare bird be driven from campus environs altogether. Instead, the land-use subcommittee of UCI's Academic Senate voted to advise Chancellor Jack W. Peltason to consider building University House, a proposed home and banquet center, on either of two alternate campus hilltops that are not habitat for environmentally sensitive birds or plants.

The campus residence for the UCLA chancellor bespeaks the power, culture and resources of a great American university. The elegant Florentine-style house, nearly 11,000 square feet, is surrounded by seven acres of lush landscaping. Inside, walls are lined with valuable paintings, including a Picasso and an Utrillo. The wood-paneled library is stocked with books and sculptures, and there are beautiful Oriental rugs throughout. One thing, however, is missing: No chancellor lives there.

A Newport Beach couple's $1-million gift to UC Irvine for the construction of a new chancellor's residence has evoked mixed reaction from various groups on campus. UCI officials and some students Thursday lauded George and Arlene Cheng for the donation announced this week, which will enable the university to begin designs on the long-awaited $2.5-million University House project, which will include a chancellor's residence and entertainment center.

When Jason Robinson transferred to UCLA in the fall as a third-year student, he considered living in a Westwood-area apartment. But then he was offered a spot in a new campus residence hall and joined a trend in Southern California and around the nation. More students want to live on campus these days, and more schools want them to. The result is a building boom. "I couldn't be happier," Robinson, a communications major from Palm Desert, said in the on-campus room he shares with two others.

An in-house inquiry into the last of six cases of possible nepotism in hiring by UC Irvine's medical program found nothing improper, officials said Thursday. The university's Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity said it found no violations in the employment of Bruce V. McGraw Jr., the brother of Maureen Zehntner, interim chief executive of UCI Medical Center in Orange.

Carrying three surfboards, a wetsuit and his George Foreman grill, Eddie Solt arrived at Cal State Channel Islands ready for the ultimate California college experience. The 21-year-old English major, a junior transfer from Torrance, was among the first to move into new student housing over the weekend at the Ventura County campus. Solt said he was stoked about his new apartment, but with the nearby beaches and a full academic load, he wasn't planning to spend a lot of time there.

Miramax might be the Goliath of this year's Academy Awards, with an astounding 40 nominations, but there is a David. Tiny Focus Features managed to pick up 11 nominations, seven for Roman Polanski's Holocaust tale "The Pianist" plus four for Todd Haynes' ode to Douglas Sirk, the '50s-style melodrama "Far From Heaven." Except for its artistic ambitions, everything about Focus is small compared with Miramax. It has a staff one-fifth the size and a commensurately modest Oscar marketing budget.

Irvine's immaculately landscaped French Country and Spanish Colonial homes could tempt almost any college professor to trade in the textbooks for a briefcase and the lucrative corporate life. But what serious academic could afford to live in such Orange County neighborhoods, where even a modest single-family home can run half a million dollars? Actually, most any UC Irvine professor.

Arsonists caused $200,000 in damage Sunday when a predawn fire destroyed three houses under construction as part of an affordable-housing program for Cal State Fullerton faculty and staff, fire officials said. Witnesses saw several people running from the scene when the fire was set about 4 a.m. at the University Gables project at Dale Street and Malvern Avenue in Buena Park, said Orange County Fire Authority Capt. Stephen Miller. "This is definitely arson," he said. The fire destroyed three houses being framed and damaged a fourth, said Miller.

In an effort to save rare songbirds, UC Irvine has devised a plan that changes the location of a planned chancellor's residence and permanently preserves all sensitive habitat on campus, university officials said Wednesday. The university had planned to build the University House, estimated to cost $3 million, atop a bluff that contains coastal sage scrub. The vanishing mix of brush and grasses is home to gnatcatchers, a threatened species of tiny gray and black birds.

More than $1 million in public and private funds have been spent over the last year or so to renovate university residences of several new California State University presidents, improvements officials say are necessary as the pressure on campus leaders to raise funds becomes more acute. Repairs to many of the homes had been delayed for years and the transition to new campus leaders provided a natural window to conduct the remodels, Cal State officials said. The $1 million is a small sum in a university system with about 420,000 students and more than $2 billion in state funding.

A Newport Beach couple's $1-million gift to UC Irvine for the construction of a new chancellor's residence has evoked mixed reaction from various groups on campus. UCI officials and some students Thursday lauded George and Arlene Cheng for the donation announced this week, which will enable the university to begin designs on the long-awaited $2.5-million University House project, which will include a chancellor's residence and entertainment center.

The campus residence for the UCLA chancellor bespeaks the power, culture and resources of a great American university. The elegant Florentine-style house, nearly 11,000 square feet, is surrounded by seven acres of lush landscaping. Inside, walls are lined with valuable paintings, including a Picasso and an Utrillo. The wood-paneled library is stocked with books and sculptures, and there are beautiful Oriental rugs throughout. One thing, however, is missing: No chancellor lives there.